Flickr Users Consider Their Potential Microsoft Overlords
Monday, February 4th, 2008
Flickr Users Consider Their Potential Microsoft Overlords
It boggles the mind how much speculation there is about what Microsoft will do to flickr if they buy Yahoo.
I feel just as odd with the lynch mob flickr group and blog comment reactions to this as I do about the thought of having anything to do with Microsoft. The flickr community can make almost anything into a political movement very quickly and that in turn can telephone into a lynch mob. I suppose it’s a testament to Flickr’s social tools that things like this can spread so quickly: what gave us flick explore with all of its liabilities allows people to find each other, form groups, and get worked up. Now, if those same people would put half the energy into the current US political scene…
Indeed. What often boggles the mind is how much better place world would be if people in western world would concentrate their idle time to meaningful political activity instead of eg. internet-fights.
In this case it seems though as if even reasonable people have various degrees of concern over the possible merger. John Siracusa is a writer I’ve known to trust, and he raises some concerns over this in his article “Knee-deep in the dead”.
knee-deep-in-the-dead
Antti: Yes, I read John’s piece and it’s very well thought out, the best thinking I’ve read yet on this.
I still think, as I said up on flickr, that we should all wait this out a bit more. Independent of this possible buyout, yahoo is flailing around now and flickr goes on strong. If there is a buyout it will take a long time to actually happen and that will give flickr users plenty of time to gracefully exit or hunker down or whatever.